Round 2: Thunderclouds Over the Battlefield

Young phenom Shahar Shenhar faced down Brazilian graybeard Willy Edel this round, both having enjoyed a victory in their first match of the tournament. As is the rule at this event, the players were given a list of their opponent's picks in the draft, but not their final decklist. During the draft, Edel had sat to Shenhar's immediate right, and so he was surprised to see so many blue cards in Shenhar's arsenal. He was in for a bigger shock as it became clear in Game 1 that Shenhar was, in fact, playing mono-red!

As for Willy Edel, the blue-based archetypes are his favorites in Modern Masters, so he was happy to see lots of blue cards in the middle of the first pack. He wound up with what he called a "pretty good" version of Blue-Green Tempo, an archetype he thinks is underestimated. "I drafted this deck a lot during Time Spiral. It's pretty much the same here," he said. Although he would've liked to have more suspend cards, he said it had a good chance of pulling out a 2-1 performance.

Willy Edel's Blue-Green Tempo strategy was solid even with Shahar Shenhar having taken a lot of cards Edel could have played. All of those blue cards ended up in Shenhar's sideboard so that the young pro could play his very deep mono-red deck.

The bad news for Shenhar was that Edel had been sitting on Incremental Growth this whole time, and so simply untapped, pumped his creatures to a lethal 9 damage, and attacked.

Edel's deck had plenty of power to back up its massive suspend spells.

For the deciding game, Edel played out his ideal opening: Æther Spellbomb, suspended Errant Ephemeron, watched as Shenhar fails to draw a third land, and then Trygon Predator. Shenhar was only stalled for a turn, but still had no play on three mana. Luckily for him, Edel had no play on four mana and Shenhar found yet another Mountain waiting for him to enable Tar Pitcher.

Edel tapped five for Sporoloth Ancient. Shenhar summoned Stingscourger to send it back, and when the Ephemeron came off suspend, his Tar Pitcher sacrificed the new goblin for 2 damage on the Ephemeron. Edel, having seen the Sudden Shock on Shenhar's card list, knew not to wait on his Echoing Courage. Shenhar was forced to untap, then throw the Pitcher itself and Sudden Shock to kill the Ephemeron.